Coming up for sale in the Phillips and Blackbird auction in Hong Kong is this Tiffany Dialed speedmaster.

This companion/collaboration auction is hidden under the rather camouflaged name "Phillips and Blackbird: Sports". On the website it is not apparent it is a watch auction. The hard catalogue is a rather self indulgent presentation, and the perpetrators of it hope the catalog becomes a reference book in years to come. Right. Lots of contrived connections.

Here is the Phillips & Blackbird online catalog here.

To be fair the website is without the hyperbole in the catalog. But the online photos are not easy to use, shot against a series of coloured backgrounds and angled away from view. It is true that you can click on them and get quite close, but not as close as usual. Quite unlike Phillips up until now, and indeed the auction photos for Hong Kong Eight are very good.

I honestly missed that Phillips had an entire second sale in HK until the hard copy of the catalog arrived. Lets see, watch my cynicism be smashed when the sale does really well. After all, its all about the watches, and how good they are, not the catalog.

Back to this watch: (See what I mean, you cannot really see it)



Just by way of cpmparison, here is a shot for the 2915 in the HK8 auction:

Back to the Tiffany speedmaster in the P&B auction

So let me blow up the important bit:



That font is right out of the Wild West!
I found this on the net:






Now Tiffany Speedmasters are a bit of a fuzzy area, and very few have been seen. As I understand from talking to an ex Tiffany employee, any watches they retailed were printed by Tiffany not the manufacturer, so after the watch was built and imported to USA. We see many examples of Rolex dials printed, and I cant find another example of this, slightly crazy wild west font.

Here is my example:



Here is a closeup:



A simple google search yields many examples of Tiffany print, none of which have this wild west type font seen in the Phillips watch. Here are some examples:




All the Tiffany Dial Speedmasters I have seen have had no Tiffany papers, just an extract to USA. My friend from Tiffany told me there was no way I could go digging through Tiffany records to try and find my watch! Of course I asked.

Now I am not going to "Pull an Orchi" and tell you the Phillips watch is a fake Tiffany dial, but I can tell you I would not be bidding on it.

In a case like this, we can only follow balance of probability.

 

Great detective work and thanks for the heads up.
Interesting read as always.
Cheers

 

The problem is they all have variation...

Generally this period had Tiffany sign things with a taller “T” but even their own stuff did not always follow that and the silver marks they used where all the same height.

Tiffany also has some variation that does not follow a cohesive timeline on packaging.

Nasty bottomless rabbit hole that has no end... no way to prove or disprove anything minus original papers, which even then does not confirm anything.

 

Very well said.

And per usual, great info Spacefruit.

 

I am absolutely no expert in Tiffany branded watches, never even laid eyes on one, but I do have experience with their turn of the century home goods, stained glass and luxury items/
And they were if anything, consistent with typeface, branding and hallmarks. The complete lack of continuity with their classic branded typeface would be enough to make me balk.

 

would not touch it at all. not even pay a premium for that..... kind regards. achim

 

There was a lot of discussion on a Cowboy Tiffany font Rolex, just recently - if i remember corrlectly, and a gmt that was being sold at a recent auction

Just need some time to find it now

 

Subtract 40 percent for any Tiffany script, if I'm buying for myself. The Meister watches looked better, and for many years buyers avoided them, too. Finding a mint 1974 Ford Pinto is rare, but finding a buyer for it is more rare. Just my opinion.

 

Here are a couple with that font. First is from an HQ Milton sale, second from a watchuseek post. In theory I suppose these could all be the same watch: look at the relative spacing of the letters in "TIFFANY & CO." compared to "PROFESSIONAL" above it.

 

I knew I had seen the Cowboy font before.

Good sleuthing.

 

I believe Clint Eastwood's man with no name character (Blondie, to Eli Wallach/Tucco) wore that watch in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

 

Good memory...

 

They cant be the same watch - one has a full stop ( period) after the Co and one doesnt

 

It's all silly. Yes, some people feel having 'Tiffany & Co' on the dial somehow adds something and they will pay a premium. Bully for them. But I wouldn't pay a dime extra for a watch that had Tiffany's, Cartier's or any other high end jewelers name on the dial. Meaningless in my book. Let others play their name games.

 

I beg to differ. A brief search of 50-70’s show a lack of consistency even on internal branding. Which is more then odd...

 

Unless someone have the purchsase receipt of the sale incluede with the watch, it is quite impossible to know if they are 100% right.
The problem appear also to be the consistency.
A friend of mine for example owns two Daytona Porcelain dial with Tiffany on the dial and both have the same font but the Tiffany logo is in two different position despite being same model withe very close serial number.
( and these two watches were purchase long before unique Daytona price went crazy, so i doubt they are fake).

Apparently Tiffany had some fun with font and location of the Logo

 

And one has hashes bleeding into the snailing on the 9 o'clock subdial and the other one hasn't.

Seeing that the watch is valuable without the added name, that it isn't heavily advertised as a Tiffany-branded Speedmaster and that dual branded Omegas are still not commanding much of a premium all points to authenticity, if only as circumstantial evidence

 

More cowboy font examples in this thread
https://omegaforums.net/threads/speedmaster-tiffany-dial.24673/

 

Mine is not a cowboy font ... it's previous

 

Totally disagree. These 2 are not the same watches. I own the first one from HQ Milton and it is different from watchuseek post.

Ok besides the extract from the archives confirming delivery to usa, there is also an additional script engraved on the lower backside lug. This might be a reference labelling from Tiffany to identify their inventory?!?

These watches have a dial with an added print, something that is rare and different from the thousands that were produced. Meister, Tiffany, ACP or even Cartier are all rare dials and the value added depends on the buyer.

Personally I love these rare dials and the lack of information makes them more interesting.